Safaricom has reviewed the prices of its voice calls and text messages. As it is, voice calls are charged at Sh4.87 per minute for peak and Sh2.50 per minute for off-peak. Sending a text message costs Sh1.20.
Introduction of New Airtime Purchase Option
This comes barely a month after Safaricom started charging Sh0.50 daily for those exceeding two free reverse calls daily. The move is viewed to prune free services as a way of raising revenues.
Safaricom informed clients about this in a recent text message: “You will be charged 50 cents on your third reverse call request. Please note that you will not incur any other cost to use this service for the rest of the day.”
To facilitate this transition process, Safaricom introduced a Sh1 airtime purchase option. A denomination as small as this allows subscribers to make reverse calls or cater for such basic needs, thus giving them some relief when finances are at their lowest.
The Reverse Call Feature and Its Impact
Safaricom introduced the reverse call feature in June 2019, enabling subscribers to make a call while the person being called pays for it. The company thus introduced such a feature to complement the ‘Please Call Me’ service and more so drive usage among subscribers. Nonetheless, the growth of reverse calls has relatively dragged revenue growth, even though Safaricom retained the leading market share in voice services.
Dominance in the Voice Market
In the first quarter of this year, Safaricom’s dominance in the local voice market rose to 65.5 percent from 63.3 percent in December, posing a challenge to its main competitor Airtel, which saw its market share drop to 33.96 percent from 36 percent.
From Safaricom data as at March, the subscribers stood at 44.67 million subscribers. However, this huge customer base has not translated to an increase in revenues mainly due to the high number of users choosing the reverse call feature.